Cyril Connolly
[4] Cyril Connolly's childhood days were spent with his father in South Africa, with his mother's family at Clontarf Castle, and with his paternal grandmother in Bath, Somerset, and other parts of England.
[5] Connolly was educated at St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, where he enjoyed the company of George Orwell and Cecil Beaton.
In his last term at Eton, he was elected to Pop, which brought him into contact with others he respected, including Nico Davies, Teddy Jessel and Lord Dunglass.
[3] He established rapport with Brian Howard, but, he concluded, "moral cowardice and academic outlook debarred him from making friends with Harold Acton, Oliver Messel, Robert Byron, Henry Green and Anthony Powell".
After his cloistered existence as a King's Scholar at Eton, Connolly felt uncomfortable with the hearty beer-drinking rugby and rowing types at Oxford.
His own circle included his Eton friends Mynors and Dannreuther, who were at Balliol with him, and Kenneth Clark, whom he met through Bobbie Longden at Kings.
At Oxford, in 1924, he made a new friend Patrick Balfour, in the spring he went to Spain and in the summer of 1924, he went successively to Greece and Crete, Urquhart's chalet in the Alps and Naples.
He spent Christmas with his parents in a rare get-together at the Lock House in Hampshire and at the beginning of 1925, he went with the college group to Minehead with Urquhart.
Then in June 1926 he found a post as a secretary/companion to Logan Pearsall Smith, who was based in Chelsea and also had a house called Big Chilling near Warsash in Hampshire, overlooking the Solent.
Pearsall Smith was to give Connolly an important introduction to literary life, and he influenced his ideas on the role of a writer with a distaste for journalism.
However, he was ill at ease and in April 1928 set off for Paris, where he met Pearsall Smith and Cecil Beaton and visited brothels posing as a journalist.
Jebb and Connolly stayed with Harold Nicolson in the company of Ivor Novello and Christopher Sykes and then made a tour of Germany.
In Paris, he met Mara Andrews, a poetic lesbian who was in love with an absent American girl called Jean Bakewell.
In August Connolly set off on his travels again to Germany, this time with Bobbie Longden and Raymond Mortimer and the experience gave rise to the essay "Conversations in Berlin" which MacCarthy published in his new magazine Life and Letters.
Boothby lent him his London flat and he shared Gerald Brenan's fascination with working-class prostitutes with experiences that appeared in his fragment for a novel The English Malady.
After a while, he was drawn to Paris again and, through Jean and Mara, became acquainted with the bohemian Montparnasse set, including Alfred Perles and Gregor Michonze who was to become the basis for Rascasse in The Rock Pool.
John Betjeman had moved into his room at Yeoman's Row, so he went to stay with Enid Bagnold at Rottingdean before visiting Dorset with Quennell.
Jean Bakewell "was to prove one of the more liberating forces in his life... an uncomplicated hedonist, independent, adventurous, celebrating the moment... An attractive personality: warm, generous, witty and approachable...."[10] She provided modest financial support that enabled him to enjoy travels, particularly around the Mediterranean, hospitality and good food and drink.
[11] The newly married couple lived in various spots in England including the Cavendish Hotel, Bury Street, Bath, and Big Chilling, before in July 1930 settling at Sanary, near Toulon, in France.
The Connollys enjoyed being part of a sophisticated literary social scene in London, but towards the end of the year, Jean had to undergo a gynaecological operation.
That was dismissed, and in November, the letting agents for the Rottingdean property wrote an appalling report on the state in which the Connollys had left the place.
Connolly met Dylan Thomas at a party and early in 1935 invited him in the company of Anthony Powell, Waugh, Robert Byron and Desmond and Mollie McCarthy.
In Paris, Connolly spent some time with Jack Kahane, the avant garde publisher, and Henry Miller, with whom he established a strong rapport after an initial unsuccessful meeting.
[3] Connolly's only novel, The Rock Pool (1936), is a satirical work describing a covey of dissolute drifters at an end of season French seaside resort, which was based on his experiences in the south of France.
In 1940, Connolly founded the influential literary magazine Horizon, with Peter Watson, its financial backer and de facto art editor.
She later became the wife of Laurence Vail (former husband of Peggy Guggenheim and Kay Boyle) but, following years of health problems, she died of a stroke while on a trip to Paris at the age of 39.
His third wife, whom he married in 1959, was Deirdre Craven (1931–2023), a granddaughter of James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, by whom he had two children later in life, including the writer Cressida Connolly (born 1960).
In 1967, Connolly settled in Eastbourne, to the amusement of Beaton, who suggested he was lured back by the cakes they had enjoyed in school outings to the town.
[2] His grave bears the inscription Intus aquae dulces vivoque sedilia saxo (Aeneid book IX: "Within, fresh water and seats in the living rock.
Kenneth Tynan, writing in the March 1954 Harper's Bazaar, praised Connolly's style as 'one of the most glittering of English literary possessions.'
